When Mark Twain said “There is no such thing as a small mir­a­cle in avi­a­tion”, he was refer­ring to the nat­ur­al kind. Mod­ern com­mer­cial flight, how­ev­er, is packed with small mir­a­cles; humans trust­ing the reli­a­bil­i­ty of air­lin­ers the same way we do the watch on our wrist, despite no real idea of how either one works and bits falling off Boeings.

The only effect of news like this quote from a whis­tle-blow­er;“787 Dream­lin­er planes are improp­er­ly fas­tened togeth­er and could weak­en over time — rais­ing con­cerns that after years in oper­a­tion, the air­craft could break apart in mid­flight”, has been con­cern that Boeing’s pro­duc­tion prob­lems will make it “hard­er for car­ri­ers to meet red-hot demand for trav­el and rais­ing the prospect of even high­er tick­et prices.”
I have to count myself among the heed­less when it comes to fly­ing. By rough count I’ve tak­en well over a thou­sand flights on scores of air­lines and plane types, more than a few of them in cir­cum­stances from which, had I giv­en it much ratio­nal thought, I wouldn’t have checked in, nev­er mind board­ed.  But then, I wouldn’t have had the fun of look­ing back on them.
My best “I‑am-not-mak­ing-this-up” fly­ing sto­ry was in 1977.
The demon­stra­bly mad, klep­to­crat­ic dic­ta­tor Jean-Bedel Bokas­sa, declared him­self “Emper­or” of one of Africa’s poor­est nations, a news events too bizarre not to cover.
Ban­gui, the cap­i­tal of the new­ly declared “Cen­tral African Empire” was not, and still isn’t, a place that gath­ers many fre­quent fly­er miles. One of the few routes in was Camer­oun Air­lines from Douala.
Board­ing was three hours late, which no one seemed to find annoy­ing, or abnor­mal. No assigned seat­ing pre­des­tined a mad rush for the board­ing gate. Police stretched their arms to make order. “One at a time.” they plead­ed. “Form a line, be civ­i­lized, you are not chil­dren…” Nobody paid any atten­tion. Being as close as pos­si­ble to the exits seemed wise, so  I sprint­ed with the best of them to grab an aisle seat.
The arm rests in the row in front of me were lift­ed to fit four peo­ple into three seats. Over­head lug­gage racks, which in those days were open, over­flowed. Hand bag­gage, plas­tic buck­ets, bun­dles of cloth­ing, pots and pans and card­board box­es tied with ropes clut­tered every avail­able space. When all the seats were filled, there were at least ten peo­ple stand­ing in the aisle, all with board­ing cards, cour­tesy of brib­able check-in staff.
We took off with them as strap-hangers.
Per­haps because they were block­ing the view, I didn’t catch the safe­ty demon­stra­tion, if there was one.

                 USEFUL, OR SELF-SERVING?                                 

Apart from admo­ni­tions to keep seat belts fas­tened, seats and tray tables upright for take-off and land­ing, the rote brief­ing lita­nies seem designed more to lull pas­sen­gers and stave off law suits than actu­al sur­vival, which may be why they’re only made when it’s too late to change your mind.
Life vests, for example.
The flight atten­dants who demon­strate how to put one on and “pass the straps around you” are stand­ing up, in an aisle, with no one near them. Imag­ine don­ning one in a mid­dle seat with fel­low trav­ellers who won’t share arm­rests, try­ing to go through the process at the same time.
And even if you man­age, you have to hope when you go down the slide you end up in a lake, a riv­er or close to shore. An emer­gency “land­ing” in the mid­dle of the ocean? Think waves.
The claim  that “seat cush­ions can be used for floata­tion” puz­zles me, too.
The instruc­tion for using an emer­gency exit is “leave all per­son­al pos­ses­sions behind”. One would think that hav­ing paid to sit on said cush­ion and being told it could save me from drown­ing (if only for a while) ‚would qual­i­fy it as a per­son­al pos­ses­sion in an emergency.
So what’s the point in assur­ing me it’ s going to be like the door pan­el that saved the hero­ine Rose in the movie “Titan­ic”?
It’s prob­a­bly one rea­son why pas­sen­gers seem more inter­est­ed check­ing the list of avail­able movies than the “emer­gency pro­ce­dures out­lined on the card in the seat pock­et in front of you.”
One item on the brief­ing list I whole­heart­ed­ly approve of is “smok­ing is prohibited”.
On Air Cana­da, in addi­tion to the as-annoy­ing-and-anti­so­cial-as-the-real-thing habits of vap­ing and e‑cigarettes, con­sump­tion of edi­ble cannabis prod­ucts is also banned. No doubt  a safe­ty issue is involved, but there’s no men­tion of “weed detec­tors” in the lava­to­ries, so how it’s enforced isn’t clear.
The best sum­ma­tion I’ve seen of all you need to know when fly­ing comes from the late Irish come­di­an Dave Allen: “Will the plane take off? When it’s up in the air, will it stay in the air? And when it comes down, will it come down where they said it would come down?”
As with birds, under present cir­cum­stance, there’s noth­ing “small” about any of those appar­ent mir­a­cles of mod­ern flight.

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